In this Zoom era, you people are my favorite underdogs in this niche. Keep surprising us! ✨

Hi Product Hunt 👋 I’m Andreas, Lead Technical Product Manager at Whereby. Today we’re super excited to release a Beta of Hybrid Meetings to all Whereby Meetings plans. Our brand new Co-location Groups feature makes setting up a hybrid meeting a breeze: once that's done, co-located folks can sit together in the same meeting room, leave their laptops’ microphones open while talking amongst each other or with remote colleagues, and enjoy really smooth audio and video throughout — it’s almost like everyone is sitting in the same room. When you experience it, it honestly feels a bit like magic. 🪄 And best of all, the only thing meeting participants need is their own laptop 💻 — no expensive videoconferencing hardware required! Yes, indeed, read on: 🔸 Why did we build this? At Whereby, we’re trying to create a world where everyone can work from anywhere they like, whether that’s in an office, from their home or even while taking a walk in the park. 🌳 Now, with many companies embracing a hybrid model of working--where employees come into the office only a couple of days per week, and work from home the rest of the time--we’ve heard from many customers stories of the pains of hybrid meetings. We’ve seen companies spend thousands of dollars on conference room hardware that is overly cumbersome to use, and doesn’t always help: these setups often make remote workers feel excluded from meetings, as they miss out on face-to-face conversations and interactions happening in the room. And in office settings where there are no fancy conference room setups, folks participating in the same meeting either end up sharing a single laptop, or else, they settle in remote corners or 1-person meeting pods in the same office in order to not get any echo or feedback 🤯 You get the picture: We made it our mission to change that, and make those meetings better and more inclusive 🙌 🔸 How does it work? At a very basic level, we’re doing three things 3️⃣ - In a group of co-located participants, we only pick up the sound from the microphone with the best position relative to the participant who’s speaking. - We block co-located participants’ voices from being played back again to them through loudspeakers in their vicinity, eliminating annoying echo and audio feedback. - We give co-located participants the option to listen to their colleagues' voices using one or all available loudspeakers (e.g. laptop speakers) in the room, depending on what works best for them. In order to help us assess who is clustered together and who isn’t, we’ve come up with the concept of Co-location Groups 📍, which allow meeting participants to indicate where they are, and who they’re with. Under the hood, all of this is powered by a combination of technologies: - Our grid of media routers running on mediasoup, which allows us to selectively send media to exactly the right participants. - Proprietary audio analysis smarts that help us determine who’s the dominant speaker. - Our RNNoise-powered noise reduction feature, which allows us to focus on the sounds that matter. 🔸 Today’s release All that said, today we’re releasing a beta version of hybrid meetings, and we’d love your feedback! Have a play around with your team — you can sign up for free if you don’t already have a Whereby account —, and let us know what you think! I also want to give a huge shout-out to the entire Whereby team who have worked tirelessly to make this a reality. Thank you all for your hard work, fresh ideas, and dedication! Happy hybrid meetings! Share your feedback in the comments. 💬

I have been using the product, for more than a month now. And it’s truly better than Zoom or Meets. The interface is clean and simple, no unnecessary complications.

@oyvind_reed and team — big congratulations! I'm co-working a few times per week with the team and I can't wait to try it next time we meet.

Wow!! This is a true game-changer!! The product is evolving in the right direction, so cool to see! Good luck on launch day.

So incredibly proud of our team at Whereby! In a time of great uncertainty in tech, and with most companies needing to make really hard choices (we certainly had to at Whereby), it's great to finally get true innovation back on the agenda and get excited about a launch. Thanks to every single member at Whereby - everyone has pitched in to make this launch. Now we iterate and improve on the experience. A product is never done! Please give it a test and let us know.

Huge feature for Hybrid teams! :) Excited to use this 🙌🏾

Great product - using it for a long time! Congrats 🎉

Brilliant stuff. I was a big fan of whereby already, but this is next level! Can't wait to test it. Good job everyone

This is fairly interesting and new! Congratulations on the launch @andreasbovens and your team!

Always loved what Whereby do, good work!

The easiest solution, the one that never fails ;)

We've been using Whereby for more than 2 years at @TransferChain - it feels great to be part of their amazing growth and success! Congratz on the launch team @andreasbovens @harrystebbings

Love the product demo! Trying it out for my calls today.

Whereby > Zoom Just tried my first hybrid meeting, too good.

"Doom" 😆I see you Whereby. But on a serious note, what's the tech that allows multiple mics in the same room, heavy background noise removal, or are you muting folk that aren't talking automatically when someone in the room starts talking?

I love whereby! The feature I love the most is the custom link that I have set up. Whenever I want to talk to someone on the team, everyone knows where to come and gather. There's no more "who's going to generate the link for this call".

Exciting – well done, Whereby-Team!

This is electrifying!! I was so many times in hybrid meetings, both as a co-located participant and as a remote participant and, let me tell you, it was never a good experience. I used to dread those meetings and I would try to have as few as possible just because it was a pain to have them. I was so excited when the team started to work on this and I am so much more excited now that I’ve tested the final result and saw the possibilities and the ease of having hybrid meetings. I can only say that I am insanely proud of our team!

Wow ! Great feature idea, can't wait to try it "in production" with an actual hybrid meeting. With the end of lockdowns, getting back to the office makes it as painful as it was to have a part of the team at the same location and others remote. There is room to improve the meeting room experience too, for hybrid experience enhancement. hope you will consider it too. Happy to share ideas.